COVID-19 has inexorably changed our economy, our travel plans, and all of our daily lives. Regardless of the severity of the actual virus, we’re living in a modified world. We at Visionary Computer are your computer’s doctors, so we’ve put together some thoughts about how best to use, care for, and leverage your technology to help you and your family get through this complicated time.

Many MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro computers are eligible for a free repair, if you don’t wait too long…

Starting with the new MacBook in 2015, Apple launched a wholly new “butterfly” keyboard mechanism, which quickly became the standard on all their laptop models (except for the old-style 2015 and 2017 MacBook Air which still used the MagSafe Charger). Unfortunately, this butterfly keyboard mechanism’s first incarnation was a little less durable than expected. Many customers worldwide have reported issues such as keys repeating, not registering, or feeling “sticky” or unresponsive.

Earlier this year, we crossed a major milestone: Visionary Computer turned 25 years old! In that time, we’ve worked for more than 9,400 people, we’ve performed more than 25,300 repairs, and we’ve generated more than 65,800 sales transactions!

The classic spinning HDDs (hard disk drives) has been replaced by SSDs (solid state drives) in ALL Apple computer models except for one lone holdout - the iMac. SSDs are far superior to HDDs - they are between five and ten times faster for read and write speeds, they are less susceptible to damage or failure, and they consume less energy. If you are considering the purchase of a new iMac, we can custom build it with an SSD straight from Apple, but if you already have an iMac, we can still upgrade you. The cost is a variable depending on how much storage you need.

Visionary Watchdog Monitoring Service uses a single, light-weight piece of software installed on your Mac, which the Visionary technical team uses to monitor for many common issues, and notify you by email when necessary. For years now, we’ve seen a change in technology support, shifting from a reactive, “break/fix” model to a more proactive, monitored model where issues can be identified and corrected before they cause a loss of productivity. The tools have matured, the process has simplified, and the costs have plummeted, and so we’ve rolled out a comprehensive bundle of services at a price anyone can afford.

Every Mac has built-in software called Time Machine that can oversee making full, regular backups of everything on your computer. All you need is an inexpensive external drive. Once you tell Time Machine to backup, it will manage itself, only alerting you if there is a problem.

General advice is to buy a new computer every three years (and a new iPad or iPhone every two years). This advice stems from the old “Moore’s Law” which basically said computers doubled in power every 18 months. While we are no longer keeping up with Moore’s Law, technology still moves at warp speed and a lot of change is happening every two or three years. Replacing your hardware with that frequency will ensure you always have modern technology at your side and potentially have AppleCare+ coverage keeping you safe.